Absolutely is the vocal minority… how many players are posting about D4? 50,000? out of 12 million players? Yep, minority. Of course, that does not mean the rest of them might not agree with the VOCAL minority.
If you’ve worked at any job or been part of a hierarchy, there will always be a vocal minority. It’s just a life fact.
I bet it will be mid like F4. I’d love to be suprised otherwise. I do love me some space games.
You’re going to quote that article 10 years from now when arguing that Diablo 5 is bad…do you work for the Washington Post or something? Dude, let it go. The person was talking about life before the lawsuit and culture change at Blizzard.
I couldn’t agree more. I’d be surprised if Rod Fergusson even plays video games, let alone even likes video games.
It’s a good article that more people should know about and read. Imagine defending Blizzard at this point lol. Do you work for Blizzard?
The game is literally being dragged through the coals by almost everyone but we are the “vocal minority”?
Go screw yourself Rod… is that vocal minority enough you out of touch fool.
The only “medicine” this game really needs is to lose this seriously out of touch corporate hack.
This interview has seriously destroyed what little hope I had for the future of this game.
if rod is so sure that all the complaints are only from a small vocal minority, then they should offer full refunds for anyone who wants one to put this to the test. if you are confident your game is beloved then no one would take you up on it, right? so give it a try and prove us wrong.
That’s a good point. Does it need to be every single player posting a comment?
The sentiment for D4 is very clearly negative even game journalists are addressing it.
If the sentiment is very clearly negative why would every player feel the need to leave a comment. Surely the opposite would happen and all the gamers that like the game would come out and say positive things so it wouldn’t change due to bad feedback. This clearly is not happening.
They would never lol. The reason that out of touch tool said what he did is to deflect from the reality.
The fact that this idiot is so willing to shove his head in the sand is not a good thing for the future of this game.
He needs to be taken off of D4 yesterday.
Here’s the thing about people being vocal on forums: they are the ones who dislike something. Ever notice that a bunch of new people come on to complain about change the devs make that “everyone was asking for”? The people asking are the dissatisfied ones. The game needs to account for those who are still enjoying it too.
You mean all the people falling for the A B tested addictive mobile gaming mechanics like asset flipped dungeons, town vendors being spread apart, massive overmanaging of stash and inventory and scanning through stats on gear wasting as much of your time as possible not actually playing the game.
Huge over tuned levelling experience.
Massive disgusting gold sinks that tank items you had to scan through thousands of items to find and literally deletes weeks worth of gold farm because you are so desperate to get the stat you need.
I’m sure the data on mobile games like Diablo Immoral look great too. Not a game I’m going to be manipulated into playing though.
And neither should others. We want art not addiction machines.
I agree and while this is speculative, I don’t think it is too far a stretch to say that this game is experiencing serious issue with core gameplay mechanics that have ultimately led to much dissatisfaction and less people playing.
There are no real metrics that I can use to justify my assumption though.
But to dismiss it all as a “vocal minority” is just outright bull pucky imho.
Then read the Esquire piece that came out after the game released. They illustrate how poorly the project was managed, and the yes men they brought in to get whatever was usable shipped. A complete mess top to bottom, before and after the lawsuit.
Years of development time and money wasted. Both on the initial protect, then on the correction to the project. That’s why the game is so shallow and uninspired.
One team playing catch-up on the live game isn’t going to cut it. It’ll take the paid expansion team to bring the game up to speed, if anyone still cares by then.
I really like Chris Wilson’s take on Harvest, which everyone else hates.
He knows you will optimize the fun out of the game for yourself if they left harvest in as it was, so they had to nuke it.
In Warframe, the devs there made the opposite choice. Between 2016 and 2023, that game has basically become an MMO with autobattle. You press 4, wait, press 4, wait, press 4, collect your loot. People DEMANDED more AoE and CC and the devs caved, ruining the game.
Chris Wilson stood by his vision and nuked Harvest, saving the game from turning into only harvest.
Like I heard about another end game mechanic where people asked for it to be buffed but Chris Wilson realised if it were buffed more people would play it and it would reduce the economy that already existed for it.
The items were needed by players but no one wanted to farm the content, so the people that did farm it were actually making good money and it essentially gave more options for farmable content that was viable.
These are the kinds of decisions you want from someone who really understands what all gamers are trying to exploit and asking for their exploitative behaviour to be part of the game. Gamers absolutely do efficiency the fun out of the game for themselves or rather those that are addicted to playing games like this seem to be a lot of influencers that then teach others to play like this.
I think again this is due to the corrupt nature of wanting to “win” to seem like a high skill player to viewers and get clicks that they actually convince themselves this is a better or fun way to play the game because they don’t want to admit they are only playing that way because they wanted more clicks.
Basically ruining the game for the rest of us that now are being taught to like and play games in exploitative and the most efficient ways.
That’s why game design has to make the most efficient way of playing also the most fun if possible and remove truly egregious exploits instead of make them part of the design philosophy.
A good example in my eyes would be adding more monster density to the point you ruin the moment to moment gameplay from hard mobs because now you can’t have cool telegraphed attacks because there’s 10 rares on screen.
I think they should force players to get good in this instance instead of giving into casuals trying to efficiency the fun out of the game for themselves instead of creating a strong bond to the game because of the hardships they had to overcome, and having a skill gap that can be experimented with and had fun with for thousands of hours.
On the timestamped video that you posted, Rod also talks about qualitative data (players’ opinions and feedback).
BTW Rod is the Executive Producer who works more like a manager and behind the scene I imagine (that’s why he often uses corpo talk). The Game Director is Joe Shely who’d be responsible for the whole creative aspect of the game.
I like Joe Shelly and Joe Piepiora. I think someone like this that seems to be a true player and visionary game director should be given full creative control over a proper Diablo project.
Hire a real artist and let them make their art. If they truly love it themselves and are proud of it and honest with themselves about its flaws but know it passed the bar for what they were truly trying to create, then others will love it too.
This is what real game development and creating real art and real games should be about.
modern AAA studios will never have that, or if they do its a very unique micro-ecosystem within a larger company. A lot of these guys have ideas that get denied by accountant type people for whatever reason.
Part of me feels that one of blizzards major issues, is their pisspoor design tools, causing excessive development time. Terrible approval process where beancounters over ride quality game decisions. Hiring fans with no skill at cut rates to save money. Designers who have more of an ego than a real vision for fun.
Thats a lot of issues, but i feel all of them are issues at blizzard. Its gotten to the point where i dont think they could make a fun quality game if they wanted to.
Its why GGG is blowing Blizzard out the water. They have a core team of diablo 2 nerds making all the calls, and the results are not always great, but the game over time is kind of in a league of its own now its such a good ARPG. Blizzard use to be that during warcraft/diablo early days.
I can’t remember the guys name but there was another interview with one of the head devs working on D4. From the way they were talking it sounded like they were part of the voices that really loved the open world design of D4 and having the dungeons in fixed locations. The mystery wore off when I realised how not unique they were… This was an issue with this design.
But I can bet they were very displeased with horse travel to Nightmare dungeons being removed.
If someone like this gets full control they are going to make a game that appeals to the people that love the open world design, love the idea of travelling around the world and horse travel.
But this angle for D4 was never fleshed out. Not enough to do on the way when travelling and not unique enough dungeons like D2 making the open world make sense and actually feel like an open world.
Choose an angle and do it properly and have someone who is passionate about that way of designing the game be able to follow through on it with real creative control.
ABK killed a battlefront style Starcraft game that was, essentially, complete and just needed polish so it wouldn’t interfere with their revenue from their activision titles.
ABK killed every RTS proposal, leading to the RTS teams to simply leave and start their own companies, mostly because a premium battlepass and cash shop doesn’t work well with the RTS genre.
However, Blizzard also can’t seem to create a vision and go for it- like a small to medium studio can. Instead, they have 9,000 employees each make tiny parts that come together to be a horrifying chimera of individually good choices that are less than the sum of their parts.
Blizzard would be better off being 10 smaller studios self publishing on steam.